JPS6316769B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a printing control method that calculates in advance the number of printing sheets to be used when printing out information from a computer to a printing device such as a line printer. .

In electronic computer systems, the results of various information processing are printed out. It is also well known that a large amount of this printed output is printed out when used for office calculations.

In such computer systems, there are demands to know how much time is reserved for replenishing printing paper and for printing output from the computer. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a printing control method that satisfies the above requirements, and this purpose is to store pre-edited information on a random access memory such as a magnetic disk device. In a printing control method in which the stored contents are printed out by a printing device, the stored contents to be printed are read, the number of lines to be printed is counted, and the lines to be printed within the page are determined by the printing format of the printing device. This can be achieved by calculating the number of printed pages from the number and calculating the number of sheets of paper to be output.

The present invention will be explained in detail below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the electronic computer system of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a central processing unit (CPU), 2 is a main memory, 3 is a service processor, 4, 4' are input/output control units, 5, 5',
5″ is a magnetic disk device, 6 is a line printer,
7 each indicate a display keyboard.

A central processing unit (CPU) 1 controls all devices under its control and also processes data.

Further, the magnetic disk devices 5, 5', 5'' are controlled by the central processing unit (CPU) 1 via the input/output control device 4, and store the sent data or send out the requested data. printer 6
is similarly controlled by the central processing unit (CPU) 1 via the input/output control device 4', and prints data sent from the central processing unit (CPU) 1.

In such a computer system, information is once edited and stored in the magnetic disk device 5 before being printed out. When this edited and stored data is printed out by the line printer 6, it is once stored in the main memory 2 and then printed out via the central processing unit 1.

In the present invention, the CPU 1 or the input/output control device 4 reads the edited and stored information in the magnetic disk device 5 described above, that is, the content to be printed out, and calculates the number of sheets of paper required for the printout. This is how it was done.

That is, when instructing the central processing unit 1 to print out via the SVP 3 from the keyboard display 7, the keyboard display 7 issues a request to display the number of print sheets required for printing in advance, and the CPU 1 outputs the printout. A command is given to temporarily read the file in which the information to be processed is stored, that is, the magnetic disk device 5.

The content of the information stored in the magnetic disk device 5 consists of print information and control information recorded at the beginning of the print information, and this control information can be printed out by sequentially searching all the information to be printed out. Find out how many rows you need.

On the other hand, the CPU 1 specifies a format indicating a print mode for the line printer 6.

Therefore, the number of printing sheets used for printout is determined by the count value of the line feed information in the control information stored in the magnetic disk device 5 and the above format.

Next, FIG. 2 shows an embodiment of the printing control system of the present invention. In the figure, reference numeral 8 denotes a format control circuit, 9 denotes a line feed information totaling means, 10 denotes a number-of-sheets totaling means, and 11 denotes a remaining number-of-sheets detection means.

From the keyboard display 7 shown in Figure 1
The CPU 1 specifies, via the SVP 3, the area in which the data to be printed next is stored, and also specifies the format for printing. Thereafter, in order to know in advance the number of sheets required for printing out the data to be printed, a command to that effect is issued.

As a result, the area in which the data to be printed out is sequentially stored is read out from the magnetic disk device 5, and only the control information therein is read out from the magnetic disk device 5.
It will be sent to. (All of the read data may be sent.) The line feed information aggregating means 9 sequentially extracts only the line feed information from the sent control information and sequentially aggregates it.
This tally result is sent to sheet number counting means 10 and converted into the number of sheets.

The sheet count counting means 10 also provides format information.

That is, when printing information on paper, a designated format is sent to the paper number counting means 10 from a format control circuit 8 which stores various print formats representing printing styles. The sheet number counting means 10 is instructed, for example, from the line feed information and the format, how many lines there are on a sheet of paper and how many digits there are, and the number of sheets is tallied based on the line feed information.

When the required number of sheets is obtained as a result, this information is displayed on the display keyboard 7 shown in FIG.

In addition, if necessary, the remaining number of sheets of paper detection means 1
1, it is also possible to detect the number of remaining sheets of paper and output a message indicating whether the information to be printed next can be printed on the paper currently left in the printing device. The remaining number of sheets of paper detection means 11 includes a counter that is reset or preset when a new sheet of paper is set in the printing device, and can be easily detected by activating the counter based on the amount of feed obtained from the sprocket that feeds the paper, for example. . By doing this, the number of sheets of paper required for printing information can be known in advance.

As described above, the present invention allows the number of sheets of paper required for printing to be known in advance when printing out information, so it is possible to detect in advance a shortage of paper and the time required for printing. This has the effect of making it easier for the operator to respond to printing operations.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 shows an embodiment of the computer system according to the present invention, and Fig. 2 shows an embodiment of the print control method of the present invention. memory memory (MEM),
3 is a service processor (SUP), 4, 4' are input/output control devices, 5, 5', 5'' are magnetic disk devices, 6 is a line printer, 7 is a display keyboard, 8 is a format control circuit, 9
10 is a line feed information aggregation means, 10 is a sheet number aggregation means,
Reference numeral 11 indicates a means for detecting the number of remaining sheets.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a printing control method in which information to be printed is stored in advance in a memory such as a magnetic disk device, the stored contents are read out and printed out by a printing device, the information to be printed is The number of sheets of paper to be output can be calculated by reading the above memory contents, counting the number of lines to be printed, and calculating the number of printed pages from the number of lines to be printed in a page determined by the printing format of the printing device. Characteristic printing control method.